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DELIVJi&Efl AT BOMBAY 


BY 


PROFESSOR JAMES DARMESTETE 


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PARSI-ISM: 

ITS PLACE IN HISTORY. 


A largely attended meeting of Parsis was held yesterday 
afternoon in the Bai Bhikaiji Shapurji Bengali Parsi 
Girls’ School, Fort, for the purpose of hearing a lecture by 
Professor James Darmesteter, College de France, Paris, on 
“ Parsi-ism and its place in History.” Sir Jamsetjee Jeejee- 
bhoy, Bart., C.S.I., was called to the chair. Among those 
present were his Excellency the Governor, who was receiv¬ 
ed with loud cheers; Mr. Justice West, Mr. Justice Jar dine. 
Professor Forrest, Professor Peterson, Mr. Grattan Geary, 
Mr. A. M. Gubbay, and others. 


The chairman, in introducing the lecturer, said :—Gentle¬ 
men,—It gives me extreme pleasure to introduce to this 
audience Professor Darmesteter, the wellknown French 
Oriental scholar. Almost all of you are well aware that for 
many years this distinguished savant has been doing great 
service to our ancient literature. His laborious researches 
in the domain of Iranian antiquities have thrown much light 
on the ancient language of our fore-fathers. Without 
giving an opinion regarding some of his theories, which 
are perhaps open to discussion, I must say that all of 
us admire his zeal, ability, and the accuracy with which 
he continues his arduous studies, for which we feel 
indebted to him, and I take this opportunity of publicly 
tendering to him the warmest thanks of our community. 
(Applause.) We feel it to be indeed a fortunate circura- 


i 



2 


Parsi-ism: its place m History . 


stance that the learned scholar, whose literary fame has long 
been known to us, and who has been quietly rendering 
such valuable services to our Avesta literature, is now 
among us. Taking advantage of his visit to us we have 
requested him to deliver a lecture on Parsi-ism, embodying 
as briefly as possible the results of his scholarly studies and 
researches, a request which he has promptly acceded to, for 
which we feel thankful to him. (Loud applause.) 

Professor Darmesteter then delivered this Lecture:— 

Sm Jamshedji Jeejibhoy and Gentlemen, 

The very kind and too flattering words in which the 
Chairman introduced me to you make it very difficult for 
me to answer. It is always embarrassing to meet with such 
high compliments, and any demur, on my part, however 
sincere, may look like false modesty. Perhaps the best I 
have to do is to accept them simply, not as being paid to 
myself, but to European science in general and more particu¬ 
larly to French science, which was first on the field in this 
scientific domain and, in most departments of your studies, 
had the honour of the initial discovery. But I should be 
ungrateful if I did not seize this opportunity to express 
publicly what I feel for the kind, ready and liberal assistance, 
never asked for in vain and more often proffered in anticipa¬ 
tion of the wish, which I always found at your hands, here, 
at Poona, at Nausari, at Surat. Your Desturs in the last 
century had not been so liberal and so open to Anquetil Du 
Perron, but the times are strangely changed. I lately made 
a pilgrimage to Surat, the birthplace of our studies, and 
visited the ruins of the French factory where Anquetil began 
his work : and thinking of the. difficulties of every sort he 
had to encounter, I could not help feeling ashamed to find 
everything made so easy to me, to find everybody so help¬ 
ing, so glad to oblige, whether he was Herbad or Behdin, 
Shahansai or Kadimi, Bhagaria or Minochihrhomi. Being 
unable to thank adequately all those amongst you to whom 


3 


Par si-ism: its place in History . 

I am particularly indebted, I shall thank the whole communi¬ 
ty in thanking two of its representatives here, our Chairman, 
Sir Jemshidji, who has kindly placed this lecture under the 
patronage of a name quite historical in your annals, and the 
organiser of this lecture, my friend, Mr. Gama, who has 
always been and is still the Providence of the A vesta scholars 
of Europe and promotes now the progress of science by the 
indefatigable assistance he lends to their efforts, as he did 
formerly by his own scientific researches. 

When I was asked to ofier you my reflections on some 
point of your history, I found so many subjects on which I 
should have liked to exchange ideas with you, that I was 
seriously embarrassed by the difficulty of choosing. How¬ 
ever, I thought, that having to address you only once* the 
best I had to do was to tell you why I am amongst you, or 
to put things in a less egotistic form, to explain to you the 
reasons of the strange interest which is felt amongst Euro¬ 
pean scholars for your religion, your language, .your litera¬ 
ture and which seems to be so much out of proportion with 
your numbers, with the extent of your Holy Writ and its 
apparent influence in the world. It is a tale that is most 
glorious to your nation, and I should have refrained from 
telling it here, lest I should be. accused and should accuse 
myself of pandering your national pride, were it not that at 
the same time, like all tales of hereditary glory, it entails 
upon you certain definite and unavoidable duties from which 
the Parsi community, I know, will not shrink. 

The point of view of scholars has changed many times, 
since the year, ever memorable in the history of Zoroastrian 
studies, 1771, when Anquetil Du Perron published the first 
European translation of your Sacred Books and the first 
account of your ceremonies and customs. New discoveries 
inside the Iranian domain or on the bordering ones have, 
more than once, brought in new ideas, opened new fields of 
research, and changed the perspective of science, and if I 
can say so, the direction of the interest. I shall not trace the 


4 


Parsi-ism: its place in History . 

history of those changes, which is, in fact, the history of 
science itself, however interesting it may be. I shall survey 
the question from our present knowledge, as five generations 
of scholars have made it, and shall try to show what are the 
different teachings that the Avesta scholar of the day—tak¬ 
ing the term in its widest sense—can expect and must ask 
from an intelligent study of your literature. 

As Zoroastrians the whole of your national and moral life 
centers in that small book, the Avesta. But that small book, 
which is to you before all your Sacred Book, and which 
could hardly be anything greater, is to us something else 
besides : it is the best, the fullest, the clearest witness that 
has come to us of the life of ancient Iran, in all its aspects. 
The religious, moral, linguistical life of one of the greatest 
empires that ever was is obscurely involved in its pages and 
it is the task of Avesta scholars to develop it and to bring it 
to light. Till the discovery of the Avesta, ancient Iran had 
left a great name, but nothing more: the ruins at Persepolis 
spoke of a great past, but did not say what it was ; the 
cuneiform inscriptions were mute, and the meagre accounts 
of the Greeks, the partial accounts of the Musulmans, were 
our only source of information, one scanty and unsafe indeed. 
The Avesta was the magic word that opened that past so 
closely sealed, and, when all its pages are fully understood, 
with that one book, w r e shall know more of the social and 
mental evolution of the old Iranians than we are ever likely 
to know of old India, with her four Vedas and her magni¬ 
ficent array of Brahmanas and Upanishads. 

When we, Europeans, open that book, the first thing that 
strikes us is that it is written in a mysterious alphabet and 
in a language unknown to us. And the first question that 
suggests itself is : what is that language, by whom was it 
spoken and to what family does it belong ? That language, 
once deciphered, reveals to us a system of religion per¬ 
fectly original, wonderfully elaborated to the last detail; and 
the questions arises : When and where did that religion 


Par si-ism : its place in History . 


5 


originate ? What was the religious state of the people to 
whom it was brought ? What are its historical relations to 
the surrounding religions? How did it influence them at 
various times, or was it influenced by them ? Then, after 
the linguist, after the student of political and religious his¬ 
tory, comes the moralist who wants to gauge the moral value 
of that religion, to ascertain whether its teaching was a dead 
word or a living word, and whether in the message it 
brought to one nation there is a word for all nations? 

Let us speak first of the language of your book, the so 
called Zend language. That language had great difficulty 
in making its rights to existence acknowledged by the Euro¬ 
pean scholars of the last century. William Jones, the cele¬ 
brated founder of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, and who 
ought to have known better, declared it to be a forgery of 
your JDesturs, palmed upon the credulity of Anquetil. It 
must be said that, twenty years later, the study of Sanscrit 
having been founded in the interval by Colebrooke and the 
great English scholars of the Calcutta school, William Jones 
was the first to recognise and proclaim the close affinity of 
Zend to Sanscrit ; but he was so struck with the similarities 
as to make Zend a mere dialect of Sanscrit, on the same 
stage as the Pracrit or Pali dialects. His theory reigned in 
England and in Germany till 1833, when Eugene Burnouf, 
in his memorable Commentaire sur le Yasna , deciphered the 
text of the Avesta, fixed the grammatical forms of its 
language, drew the general outlines of its lexicon and 
showed to the evidence that Zend, though closely allied to 
Sanscrit, is not a Hindoo dialect, but represents one of the 
old languages of Persia. 

Two years after the publication of the Commentaire sur le 
Yasna, and following the impulse given by it, the cuneiform 
inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings were deciphered at 
the same time, by Burnouf in Paris, by Lassen in Bonn and 
by (Sir) Henry Rawlinson in Persia : they revealed a lan¬ 
guage, closely allied to the language of the Avesta, though 



6 


Par si-ism > its place in History. 

independent of it. Another great scholar, Jules Oppert, 
showed that modern Persian is descended from that dialect. 
Then came the bright days of the Pehlvi, which appeared 
to be the intermediate link between old Persian and modern 
Persian. The key to the knowledge of Pehlvi, that 
language apparently so complicated both in its writing and 
its structure, had been given as early as 1793 by Sylvestre 
de Sacy, who, during the worst days of the Revolution, sat 
peacefully deciphering the inscriptions of the Sassanian 
kings. His discovery was left sterile for more than forty 
years, when it was taken up by Muller, Spiegel and especial¬ 
ly by Haug who gave to Pehlvi studies a powerful impulse, 
and at last by that great Pehlvi scholar, Dr. West. From all 
those discoveries it appears that Zend was the language of 
Media proper or Northern Iran ; that the old Persian w^as the 
language of Persia proper or the province of Farsistan ; that 
from the old Persian came the Pehlvi in the middle ages and 
from Pehlvi the modern Persian. It became thus possible to 
embrace the whole linguistical history of Iran : but in that 
work of linguistical restoration, the relative richness of the 
Avesta text, compared with the scanty documents of the 
Achaemenians, makes it the foremost source of evidence 
and gives it, in the illustration of the Iranian dialects, the 
same importance as the Sanskrit possesses in the illustration 
of the dialects of India. It is thus that now you can trace 
up both the forms and the words of the Persian language, 
through all the stages of deformation and reformation, 
century by century, from the lips of the peasant of to-day to 
the lips of King Darius and of the disciples of Zoroaster; 
even farther up, to the time when the common ancestors of 
the Rishis and of the Zarathushtrotemas spoke one and the 
same language, pregnant with all the dialects which are now 
spoken from the sources of the Tigris to the mouths of the 
Ganga. 

Now, from the outside of the book let us pass to the inside, 
from the word to the meaning, from the language to the 
religion it embodies ; to that religion of Zoroaster, of which 


Par si-ism : its place in History. 


7 


the renown had come down to us, with a halo of sanctity, 
through the records of the classical writers ; which had pre¬ 
occupied the last thoughts of Greek philosophy; which had 
troubled the dreams of many a mystic of our own middle 
ages, and which, in the last century, the age of scepticism 
and incredulity, had still such a power of fascination that, 
on the sight of a few Zend pages, a young man, hardly 
twenty, would leave his country and cross alone through 
India, all ablaze with war, to go and gather the mysterious 
books and learn their meaning from their last interpreters. 
What is that religion, I have not to teach you : it is a sub¬ 
ject on which I have more to learn from you than you have 
to learn from me. I want only to say a few words about its 
origin and its development. The question of its origin is one 
of the most obscure in that domain of Comparative Theology 
where everything is obscure. This, however, seems pretty 
certain that, before the constitution of Zoroastrism, there 
was between Iran and India the same close affinity in their 
religions as was in their languages. The Avesta and the 
Veda have still many gods and many myths in common, and 
the points of contact are so striking in spite of not less strik¬ 
ing differences that some of the former students of the Avesta 
were led to make Zoroaster the chief of a sort of crusade 
against the Vedic religion. I believe that this theory can¬ 
not stand a close enquiry and, as far as I see, it has no lon¬ 
ger any adherent in Europe. What is more likely is that the 
old religion of Iran, which was to a great extent a counter¬ 
part of the Vedic, and more loosely of the Homeric mytho¬ 
logy, underwent a thorough change, either by the slow and 
continued effort of a school of moralists and philosophers, or, 
to use the language of your tradition, by the revelation^!! 
an inspired Prophet. That change can be defined: the 
attribution of a moral character to all the powers which, in 
the old religion, were active in a mythical character and 
more generally, the attribution of a moral character to all 
the powers in the world. The whole of Zoroastrism is there ; 
for this led a step farther, to the classification of all the 


8 


Parsi-ism: its place in History. 


powers in the world into two opposite series, to their sys¬ 
tematical opposition and, to crown the drama of the world 
with a vision of hope, to the assumption that good will 
prevail and that everything will be all right at last. In 
the religious history of the world, there is only one revolu¬ 
tion that can be compared with that, though it is very 
different in the materials on which it was operated : it is 
the revolution which, nearly in the same part of the world 
and perhaps at the same time, transformed the old Semitic 
polytheism of the Hebrews and after several generations of 
Prophets, from Isaiah to Ezekiel, out of the God of a tribe 
made a God for all nations and all men. 

To fix the time of Zoroaster or the Zoroastrian revolution 
is to this day a desperate question. Between the Greek 
tradition that liberally makes Zoroaster live 6,000 years 
before the Trojan war, and your own tradition which modest¬ 
ly makes him appear two hundred and fifty eight years be¬ 
fore Alexander, the safest plan is to keep the question open 
for the time being and to wait patiently for further historical 
evidence. One thing at least seems certain, namely that the 
Zoroastrian revolution was complete at the time of the first 
Greek account of the Magian religion, that is to say in the 
fifth century B.C., in the time of Herodotus and king Arta- 
xerxes, who, according to your tradition, was the grandson of 
Kai Yishtasp, the first proselyte and the first soldier of 
Zoroaster. 

As to the place where Zoroastrism was born and on its 
spread and further development, we are less in the dark. 
The data in the Avesta, in your traditional books and in the 
records which found their way from similar sources to the 
Musulman historians agree with the constant testimony of 
the classical writers in pointing to Media as the native place 
of Zoroaster and the Magi and as the cradle of Zoroastrism. 
From Media it went to Bactria, and the memory of its strug¬ 
gles against the pagan tribes or states there has left a last¬ 
ing and poetical echo in the epic cycle of Gushtasp. From 


Parsi-ism: its place in History . 


9 


the North it spread southwards : to what extent it conquered 
Persia proper in the time of the Achaemenian kings, is a 
question still much vexed amongst European scholars and 
on which I am not prepared to offer you a definite opinion. 
We lose sight of it after Alexander during the Greek and the 
Parthian rule: still we feel its presence all over the world. 
In the first century before Christ, it presents the West, dis¬ 
gusted with its gods and longing for a higher ideal, with the 
worship of Mithra and the renovation for eternal life through 
the blood of Sarsaok. Mithra, the unconquered God of light, 
kept the empire of the souls for nearly three centuries, dur¬ 
ing the long interreign between Jupiter, old and worn out, 
and Jesus still growing. In the next century Strabo intro¬ 
duces us to a Deri Mihr in Lydia, and we see the fire of 
Ormazd going forwards with its priests, probably in the suite 
of Persian merchants, as we see it now spreading from Bom¬ 
bay to Hongkong, to Shanghai and to the rock of Aden. In 
the third century, we see Zoroastrism enthroned with the 
new dynasty of Sassan, identified with the Iranian nation¬ 
ality itself, and becoming the religion of the State all 
through Iran. After six centuries of prosperity comes the 
Arab invasion, the Avesta is silenced, the Atash Kadas are 
extinguished, and here you are, the remnants of a nation 
and the last witnesses of a religion that overshadowed half 
the world. 

All that story is not told in the Avesta, but it is not pos¬ 
sible to understand it without knowing the Avesta, as it is 
impossible to understand the Avesta without knowing that 
story. The Avesta is the ray of light, the column of fire, 
that guides the historian through the wilderness of Iranian 
history, illuminates the scanty documents preserved from the 
Achaemenian and Sassanian period, gives a meaning to the 
vague and obscure accounts of foreign writers, Greek, Latin, 
Jew, Armenian, Chinese. The Avesta is, again, the leading 
thread through that daedal of sects and heresies which 
sprung out around Ormazd and Ahriman in the beginning of 
the Christian era, which, under the name of Gnosticism, 

2 


10 


Parsi-ism: its 'place in History. 

troubled the first centuries of the new Church ; which, under 
the name of Manicheism, convulsed Persia herself, and when 
stamped out there, went and brought a sort of counterfeit 
Mazdeism to all the quarters of the world, to Turkestan and 
China, to the coast of the Coromandel, to Bulgaria and even 
as far as France, to the coasts of our Province. And even 
the author of the Coran, how often did he not borrow from 
that book which his successors wanted to tear to pieces ! 
Though he devoted to the eternal fire the Arab minstrel who 
sang of Rustem and Isfendyar, yet he listened willingly to 
Salman the Farsi telling him of the Bridge of Hell. Most of 
the sects that later on tore Islam in Persia are only the old 
religion in disguise ; they are the revolt of the old spirit, or 
at least its effort to adapt the new dogma to its own instincts 
and traditions. The Shiya sect and that doctrine of an 
Imam, sent from above to rule the earth from generation to 
generation, could be born only in the country of Jemshid 
and Feridun, and was a revival of the divine right of the 
Kayanides : even that Mahdi, who, from the first century of 
Islam, made his appearance in the world as a herald of the 
last days and of the eternal reparation, was only the Maho- 
medan form of Him whom you call Saoshyant, but whose 
advent, more wisely and with a better sense of the worldly 
realities, you threw back into a more distant futurity. A 
great religion never dies : even when annihilated by sword 
and fire, it still lives on, unknown and unrecognised, in 
many hearts that ignore it : Persia could burn the Avesta, 
recite the Coran, forget the name of Zoroaster and Ormazd 
for the name of Mahomet and Allah, and the twenty-one 
words of the Honover for the eight words of the Kalima: 
still the inner soul of the popular religion remained un¬ 
changed. All the genii and demons, the Jinns, Devs 
and Paris, which had filled the rivers, the mountains 
and the deserts, reigned on peacefully in their empire, as if no 
change had taken place in the temples ; and for the mass of 
the nation nothing was changed, neither on the earth, nor 
in hell nor in the heavens. 


11 


Far si-ism: its place in History . 

Yon see how far beyond what seems to be its natural field 
extends the action of your Sacred Book. No scholar who 
wants to know and understand the Persia of Islam can ignore 
that Book. The masterpiece of mediaeval Persia, the Shah 
Nama of Firdusi, is a monument raised to your historical 
tradition, a magnificent commentary on that part of the 
Avesta which contains the fragments of your old epic lore- 
No student of the Persian epic will understand Firdusi and 
his followers, if he has not traced the stream of poetry to its 
Avestean source, and any interpreter of that part of the 
Avesta is sure to stumble and grope in the dark who will not 
look, through its scattered ruins, to the bright and unfailing 
ray that falls from the heights of the Shah Nama. 

Thus far I have told you only of the historical importance 
of the Avesta and of its value in the eyes -of the scholar. 
But there is for every religion a much higher question than 
to knowhow far it has extended its rule and how many souls 
it has mastered. That question is : what has been, what is 
its power for good?—An old fanciful etymology of Zoroaster’s 
name was The Living Word. The etymology is certainly 
wrong, though I cannot present you with the right one ; still 
the man who first proposed it had wonderfully expressed the 
essence of Zoroastrism. The religion of Zoroaster was a 
religion of life, in the noblest sense of the word ; it brought 
to its followers two things, of which the old Aryan religions 
in the midst of which it rose had no idea, or only a dim 
apperception : those two things were: moral duty and hope. | 
A man armed with those two weapons can calmly face life 
and fate. I would not speak slightly of any of the creeds of 
India : no one is a greater admirer than I am of the grand 
metaphysical constructions of Brahmanism, and I believe 
that no philosophy ever dreamed such grand and magnificent 
visions of the world, of Fate and the Infinite, as were seen 
in the stillness of the forest by the authors of the Arauyakas. 
But India was too much absorbed in the Infinite to think 
much of these atoms, the earth and man ; the pang of philoso¬ 
phical problems stifled in her heart the cry of conscience 


12 


Parsi-ism: its place in History. 


searching for guidance, and when with Buddha she turned 
herself to the moral problem, she found no solution but in 
Nirvana. In Islam that moral feeling is strong to the utmost, 
and I think, for my own part, that one does not generally do 
sufficient justice to the high and ennobling aspects of Islam, 
to that feeling of universal fraternity amongst the faithful, to 
that intensity of faith, that may sometimes border on fanati¬ 
cism, but makes men ready to die for their creed. Pascal 
said : Je crois nne religion dont les temoins se font Sgorger. 
But that very intensity of faith, that makes the Musulman so 
strong against man, makes him weak against fate, for the 
condition of all progress is not to submit. But to go on 
struggling against odds, when everything seems desperate, 
it is necessary to have a faith that orders us to act and to 
hope ; and the Zoroastrian faith not only gives its follower 
a moral rule through life, not only directs “ his heart, his 
tongue, his hand,” teaching him “ good thought, good word, 
good deed,” but it tells him that that the Good will prevail 
at last, if he does his duty; that a son of the Prophet, 
Saoshyant, will come and open the eternal reign of Ormazd 
and exterminate the evil from the world. The poorest, the 
meanest Zoroastrian in the world knows that he is born a 
soldier of Saoshyant, and that Ormazd will conquer through 
him. No creed could give greater dignity to life ; raise 
man, as a man, nearer the God above, imbue him deeper 
with a sense that “life is earnest” and worth living. He 
who is sure that he will win, if he tries, will win, and this is 
why, after so many storms and through so many catastrophes 
you are here, ahead of India, ahead in the race of progress, 
with the face, as of yore, turned still to the light. That 
dogma of Hope, that belief that everything will be all right 
some day on the earth, does not belong exclusively to Zoro¬ 
astrism ; but wherever it appeared, it was fruitful with fruits of 
life. That belief in the advent of Saoshyant and in the final 
victory of the good, is the same which in the old Testament 
was called Messianism and which modernPhilosophy,in a more 
abstract and less coloured form, calls the Belief in Progress. 


Par si-ism: its place in History . 13 

It is a great title of nobility to you to be the heirs and re¬ 
presentatives of the religion that first, in the Aryan world, 
promulgated the vic.tory of God and gave a meaning and an 
object to human life. And this is why that religion of yours, 
though you are only a few, belongs to Humanity as well as 
to yourselves; this is why European scholars come here to 
gather from your lips the tradition of your ancestors, and 
search eagerly for all the remains of the past. I have 
already said how nobly you receive them and how deeply 
they feel your kindness. But however grateful they may 
be to you for your assistance, there is something else, some¬ 
thing more they will ask you; it is your co-operation. There 
is a task which they cannot undertake and which you can, a 
task which must be performed if you want Zoroastrian studies 
to make a real advance. What threatens to sterilise those 
studies is the scantiness of texts, that makes scholars turn 
over again and again a few documents, always the same, 
which have yielded nearly all they can yield in the actual 
state of knowlege, so that the research turns round in a 
closed area Authout advancing, and too often wastes itself in 
baseless speculations and idle controversies. Science of any 
sort, whether it deals with history, or languages, or nature, 
must live on facts; and, for philology and history, facts are 
given by texts. Now you have a large unedited literature, 
out of reach in Europe, and which alone can give research 
the materials wanted. I know of more than one controversy 
which has made much ink flow here or in Europe and which 
could be settled at once with one line from some one of those 
manuscripts. That unedited literature is threefold, and con¬ 
tains Pehlvi, Persian and Gujarati books. I enumerate them 
in the order of their relative importance and the urgency of 
publication. I know that Pehlvi literature is not popular 
with everybody either in Europe or here : in Europe there 
are scholars who object strongly to it, because. Pehlvi is an 
awkward and uncouth language which has not the polish 
and the elegance of Sanscrit, and because the Pehlvi transla¬ 
tions of the Avesta rather rudely trouble them in their clever 


14 


Par si-ism : its place in History. 


etymological speculations on that fifth of the Vedas, called 
the A vesta. I am sorry to say that here also I have heard 
expression given now and then to a feeling of the same kind, 
though inspired by different motives: there seems to prevail 
the idea that the Pehlvi literature is not much worth the 
trouble its study requires and that all the effort of the 
research must be brought to bear on the Avesta and the 
Gathas. I believe that no sufficient justice is done to the 
immense historical value of the Pehlvi literature, and I beg 
to state emphatically that no real progress will be made as 
long as those books are left to sleep in the dust. You 
have, for instance, in Bombay two copies of the original 
Bundehesh, your book of Genesis, which are the oldest, the 
most complete known to exist, which contain twice as much 
matter as that fragmentaxy Bundehesh that has been pub¬ 
lished and translated and commented upon so many times in 
Europe, and are full of new and valuable information on 
some of the most vexed points of the Zoroastrian science. 
Any man with the feeling of a scholar would shiver at the 
mere idea of the possible destruction or loss of such a trea¬ 
sure : it must be saved. There are other Pehlvi manuscripts 
hardly less important, of which I could give you the list and 
which must be published. Strange to say, even your Per¬ 
sian literature has hardly been better treated than the Pehlvi. 
When I visited your libraries here the first Persian book for 
which I asked was the Sadder, that celebrated book, of 
which the translation by Hyde, two centuries ago, called first 
the attention of Europe to your literature: the answer was, 
there is no printed edition of it. I asked for a copy of the 
Zardusht Nama, the poetical biography of your Prophet. I 
was answered that an edition had been lithographed in 1842, 
but I did not find anybody who had seen it with his mortal 
eyes. After much enquiry I learnt that there is one copy of 
it in the metropolis of Parsi-ism ; it is to be found in the 
Library of the Asiatic Society. There are the elements of a 
history of the Parsi community, both ot Iran and India, in 
the Ravaets , those curious theological correspondences be- 


15 


Parsi-ism: its place in History. 

tween the Desturs of both countries, which four centuries 
ago brought about the revival of Zoroastrism here : the 
Ravaets, the oldest at least must be published. Mr. Bamanji 
Patel showed lately, by the intelligent use be made of them, 
the historical importance of those family papers, the Vahis, 
the Feres and the Nam Grahans : it would be good if the 
oldest of them were published, as well as the Firmans, grant¬ 
ed by the old Musulman or Hindu rulers. 

There is, you see, plenty of work, and a sort of work that 
can be done well only here. Some gentlemen perhaps will 
tell me—as some have already done—these texts will be 
better published in Europe. I answer : No: they will not be 
better published, because they will not be published at all; 
firstly, because we have not the manuscripts; second^ 
because we have not men enough for the work. You must 
not believe that everybody in Europe has a turn for Zend, 
Pehlvi, Persian and Gujarati. The Pehlvi scholar, in parti¬ 
cular, is still a rarer bird over there than here, and there is 
only one Dr. West in Europe. European scholars may will¬ 
ingly translate from the Pehlvi, they are loath to editing it: 
Mr. Noeldeke has published a translation of the Pehlvi Story 
of Ardeshir : if you want to compare his translation with the 
original you must go to London, Munich or Bombay. The 
translations of the Dadistan, of the Shayast la Shayast, of 
the Zad Sparam, by West, have been done from manuscripts, 
not from any printed edition; so that the student is unable 
to gather all their utility from the labours of the great Eng¬ 
lish scholar. Editors for those texts must be found here, 
translators will come afterwards; and those editors will be 
found amongst you, I know, though in your modesty you are 
apt to think too much of European scholarship and too little 
of your own. Besides Destur Peshotan, the editor and trans¬ 
lator of the Dinkart, besides Dastur Jamaspji, the author of 
the Pehlvi Dictionary, besides Dastur Hoshangji, the col¬ 
laborator of Haug, you have this modest, retiring and tho¬ 
rough scholar, Mr. Tahmuras Dinshawji, you have the editor 
of Adarbad Maraspand, the editor of the Namsitayish, and 


16 


Parsi-ism : its place in History. 

in the younger generation, there is more than one student, 1 
know, who will be able to undertake and perform in a con¬ 
scientious and competent way a task of that sort, if he finds 
proper advice and proper support. 

I know that there is a fund, the fund created by the liber¬ 
ality of Sir Jamshedji Jeejibhoy, which fulfils an object 
similar to the one 1 propose : but it is just now occupied, and 
worthily occupied, by Dastur Peshotan’s edition and trans¬ 
lation of the Dinkart; and moreover, what we require is not 
a translation of the books 1 have mentioned, but the mere 
text of them. Much money is not needed : with 10,000, say 
15,000 rupees, you will have in less than four or five years 
the most important part of your medieval literature saved 
from destruction and thrown into scientific circulation. I 
know it is bold to tell people : Pay for the printing of a book 
which you will never be able to read, and the translation of 
which, if any is ever done, will be perhaps published in 
French or in German, that is to say a milder form of Pehlvi. 
That is true: but allow me to tell you what has taken place 
in similar circumstances in my native country. We have in 
France an immense medieval literature which has been for a 
long time forgotten and neglected, though in the old times 
it made the law in European literature. Some years ago a 
few scholars, with the help of a few Nababs, founded a 
society called Societe des anciens textes , that is to say a society 
for editing the old French texts. There are now, I think, 
six hundred members, who every year pay twenty rupees 
and get in exchange four volumes of old French, which 
perhaps twenty of them are able to read and to understand : 
the five hundred and eighty others take the books, put them 
carefully in their library, let them rest there...and pay on: 
they know perfectly well that they cannot read them, they 
don’t even pretend to read them, it is pure Pehlvi to them: 
but they know, they feel that they owe this to the Ferouers 
of their ancestors ; they know that some day a clear-headed 
scholar, a wide-hearted poet will come, who, out of the dust 
of the generations, will raise the image of the dead, evoke 


17 


Par si-ism: its place in History. 

the genius of the past, make the Life of the centuries gone 
throb through the heart of the present and transfuse the 
glories of the past into the dreams of the future. They know 
also that through their slight unpretending sacrifice uni¬ 
versal knowledge will be increased. 

I do not ask you to found a society for the publication of 
Pehlvi texts: a society is needed only where the work is to 
last for years : the work needed just now is not half a dozen 
years’. What is needed is the raising of a fund that will 
cover the expenses of editing a few texts to be chosen by a 
scientific committee. 

In a few days you are going to celebrate the Jubilee of 
the Queen-Empress, the golden marriage of India with Eng¬ 
land, the golden marriage of the East with Western civili¬ 
sation. You will join with your usual munificence in the 
public festivities : but if you want to impress particularly 
the Parsi mark upon your demonstration of loyalty, what 
better opportunity could be found at the same time to per¬ 
form a duty to your race and to do honour to the Queen of 
the West than by showing how deeply you have imbibed 
the Western spirit, the spirit of science and research ? In 
your banquets it is usual to have three toasts, one to Qrmazd 
and the Amshaspands, the second to the Ferouers of the 
ancestors, the third to the Queen-Empress. Let, therefore, 
the Ferouers of your ancestors have here also their part in 
the festival: let the revival of your literature, let the rais¬ 
ing of the Jubilee Pehlvi Fund, be the Parsi Memorial of 
the Jubilee of the Queen-Empress. 


Mr. Dosabhai Framji, in proposing a vote of thanks to-* 
Professor Darmesteter, said :—It is with very great pleasure, 
indeed, that I rise to propose a vote of thanks to the learned 
lecturer for his able and valuable discourse which you have 
just heard. The subject is in itself a very interesting one 
to all, but more especially to the Parsis as evidenced by the 
breathless attention you have paid it. I am sure you will 
3 



18 


Parsi-ism: its place in History. 

all agree with me that Professor Darmesteter has done full 
justice to the subject, and that we, to whose ancestors it 
relates, have learned a good many new things to-day ior 
which we cannot but feel deeply indebted to the learned 
gentleman. We, Parsis, will always be free to confess that 
we are indebted in a great measure, I would not be wrong 
if 1 said chiefly, to European savants for the knowledge we 
have gained about our ancient religion and literature. 
Anquetil du Perron was the first of that band of savants 
who has thrown light upon our religious books which were 
more or less sealed to our ancestors in India. It is very 
interesting to know how Anquetil was induced to come to 
India. A gentleman connected with one of the earliest 
European factories established at Surat became possessed 
of some Zend manuscripts which he took to England. 
Anquetil happened to see one of the pages, hung as a 
curiosity at a shop window, and then and there determined 
to go out to India to investigate the Parsi religion. After a 
stay of four years in this country he carried back with him 
a number of manuscripts which excited the curiosity of 
those who saw them, and many learned men sought to un¬ 
ravel their contents. I dare say you all know of the labours 
of Anquetil himself in this respect. Another Frenchman, 
Eugene Bournouf, has left his mark as a most critical 
examiner of the Zend language. The taste for Oriental 
literature passed from France to Germany, where our 
ancient language was investigated with great ardour. To 
those of you who have studied this subject, the names of 
Bopp, Lassen, Spiegel and Haug are no doubt familiar. The 
valuable services which the last named scholar has rendered 
to Parsi literature and religion must be fresh in your mind. 
Amongst Englishmen Dr. West is noted as one of the best 
Pehlvi scholars. The fame of the learned lecturer to-night 
as a very acute scholar had preceded him here. He has 
translated in English the Vendidad and the Yashts for Max 
Mullers series of Eastern Religions. He has written 
numerous essays which he has collected together in a work 


19 


Parsi-ism: its place in History. 

called Francieuse studies. He is a linguist of no ordinary 
merit. During his stay in Bombay he has, I hear, employed 
his time most usefully. He has examined almost all the 
libraries, collected a good many works, and has had free 
intercourse with our Dustoors and other students of Zend 
and Pehlvi; and while there is no doubt he will give to the 
world the result of his researches, let us hope it will be in 
English, so that we may be able to read it. Gentlemen, the 
presence of His Excellency the Governor here to-night is a 
valuable testimony to the high position which Professor 
Darmesteter occupies among the scholars of Europe. And 
the presence of H. E. the Governor reminds me of the honour 
which His Excellency recently conferred upon the learned 
Professor, which, by the way, I may mention, as the learned 
Vice-Chancellor of the University eloquently observed the 
other day at the Convocation, was an honour conferred upon 
the University itself, which will hereafter claim Professor 
Darmesteter as one of its members. Professor Darmesteter 
having made personal acquaintance, we may well hope too 
that he will continue to take an interest in our people, and 
in the investigation of our religious books. Before I sit 
down I desire to throw out a hint to some of our Zend and 
Pehlvi scholars to visit France and Germany in order to 
exchange views and to extend their studies with the help 
of the European savants. Such mutual intercourse would be 
of immense benefit to our community. I now propose that 
a hearty vote of thanks be given to Professor Darmesteter 
for his able discourse on the most interesting subject of 
Parsi-ism, and its place in ancient History. (Applause). 

The vote was seconded by Dustoor Dorab Peshotum 
Sunjana, who said:— 

I have great pleasure in supporting the eloquent appre¬ 
ciation just made by our eminent historian, Mr. Dosabhai 
Framji, of Dr. Darmesteter’s literary contributions by ex¬ 
pressing, warmly though briefly, our indebtedness to the 
lecturer for his various services not only to the Zend-Avesta 
literature, but td the Iranian literatures generally. It is a 


20 


Parsi-ism: its place in History. 


happy coincidence that we have to-day the opportunity of 
uttering our personal feelings of gratitude for the valuable 
and spontaneous help which the distinguished lecturer and 
his European colleagues have given us in our attempts to 
interpret the Zend-Avesta. It is true, we cannot recognize 
these European savants as our religious teachers, we can 
scarcely be expected to be prepared to admit their wide 
generalizations of comparative mythology; still we must 
frankly acknowledge that we owe to them a world of 
thanks for the highly useful assistance rendered to us in 
the formation of our own ideas, both as to our religious 
tenets and as to the social and moral habits of our early fore¬ 
fathers. Professor Darmesteter is one of those pre-eminent 
living scholars who have enriched Oriental literature by 
their contributions to the knowledge of Iranian antiquities. 
He is the author of many important works which relate to 
different subjects connected with ancient Iran. As the first 
fruit of his primary Zend studies, I mention his “ Notes on 
the Avesta ” written in French. It is a useful book of refer¬ 
ence for Zend students, as showing the philological rela¬ 
tions of several obscure words and phrases occurring in the 
Avesta. His next literary production is his dissertation 
on the different attributes of the Ameshaspands, Haurvatat 
and Ameretat. In this book the author attempts to show 
in what respects the material attributes of these two 
Ameshaspands can be reconciled with their abstract 
attributes, and how we can account for the testimony of 
the Avesta that the archangels of waters and plants are 
also the archangels of health and immortality. The first 
elaborate essay written by Professor Darmesteter in French 
on the contents of the Zend Avesta was his Ormazd 
et Ahriman , wherein his treatment of the questions relat¬ 
ing to the Zoroastrian Deity Ahurmazd seems to be 
strictly scientific, and is an admirable illustration of the 
author’s great learning as a comparative inythologist. As 
a contribution to comparative philology Professor 
Darmesteter published in French a valuable collection en- 


Par si-ism: its place in History. 


21 


titled “ Eranian Studies,” in which he treats of the different 
changes which the Old-Persian dialect had undergone dur¬ 
ing the several stages of its development from the time 
of the Achgemenidse to that of Ferdosi who flourished about 
a thousand years ago. This book also contains the author’s 
critical opinions upon the works of Professor Oppert, Drs. 
Spiegel, Haug, Justi, Geiger, Geldner and Keipert. Besides,, 
it includes some interesting details of Iranian etymology and 
legend together with the Sanskrit, Pazand and Pehlvi texts 
of certain portions of the Khordeh Avesta. But, besides these 
voluminous labours in French, Dr. Darmesteter’s far more 
familiar and important works are his English translations of 
certain portions of the Avesta, published in the series of the 
Sacred Books of the East planned by Professor Max Muller. 
It was truly very flattering to the French savant , that 
Professor Darmesteter was selected from the European world 
of letters for the extremely difficult task of interpreting 
the Zend-Avesta to the English nation. The choice itself 
was an official recognition of his profound erudition, and 
the accuracy with which his task of translation was brought 
to an end proved that he was really worthy of the confi¬ 
dence placed in him. Professor Darmesteter’s English trans¬ 
lation of the Yendidad and the Yashts has its peculiar 
merits. Even if we do not accept his reflections 
on the Prophet and the origin of Zoroastrism, we ought 
to admit that so far as his method of translating our scrip¬ 
tures is concerned, he is far more reliable than his prede¬ 
cessors. Without dwelling upon the clearness of his lan¬ 
guage, the accurate selection of phraseology to express the 
meanings of ambiguous and obscure terms, the collection 
of historical data, there are two very prominent features 
which commend him to the veneration of every Avesta 
student. First, his patient research to clear away most of 
the obscurities and inaccuracies which somewhat encum¬ 
bered all previous efforts to interpret the Avesta. Se¬ 
condly, his sound judgment in discarding all the fanciful 
speculations sometimes indulged in by Vedists and Sans- 


22 


Parsi-ism: its place in History. 

kritists, and also in adopting the native meaning so far as it 
could be reconciled with the results of comparative philo¬ 
logy. Professor Darraesteter’s services as an English trans¬ 
lator of the Avesta are, gentlemen, of considerable impor¬ 
tance, and it is for these especially that we should feel it 
our duty to express our deep sense of obligation to him 
as well as to the University which has been encouraging 
him in his praiseworthy studies. 

Mr. Hormusjee Dadabhoy proposed a vote of thanks to 
the managing committee for lending the use of their hall, 
which was seconded by Mr. Jeevunjee Jamshedjee Mody. 
In doing this, Mr. Jeevunjee said :— 

It is very gratifying that we have been honoured to-day 
with the presence of His Excellency the Governor. His 
Excellency’s presence is welcome as the Chancellor of our 
University. It is also gratifying that we have been 
honoured to-day with the presence of our learned Vice- 
Chancellor, the Hon’ble Mr. Justice West. Again, it is a 
strange coincidence that we have here to-day Professor 
Peterson, the Registrar of our University. In fact, we have 
here to-day the heads of the Executive body of our Uni¬ 
versity. Taking advantage of their presence, I beg to 
say that it is very strange that Zend and Pehelvi, the lan¬ 
guages of the religious books of the Parsis, are not recog¬ 
nized by our University as second languages for its curricu¬ 
lum. When the colleges of the distant countries of Europe 
encourage the study of these languages, it is very strange 
that the University of the town of Bombay, which is the 
principal centre of the Parsis, should not recognize them. 
All the other communities of Bombay have the option of 
studying the sacred languages of their scriptures for the 
University course, but a Parsi has not that option. A Hindu 
can study for his University course the Sanscrit of his 
Vedas, a Mahomedan the Arabic of his Koran, a Jew the 
Hebrew of his Old Testament, but a Parsi cannot study the 
sacred languages of his Zend-Avesta. Again, it is not only 
on this ground that we ask for the introduction of these 


L.of C. 


Par si-ism: its 'place in History. 


23 


languages, but you have heard to-day from the lips of the 
learned lecturer what a vast held the literature of these lan¬ 
guages opens to a student for scientific research. This 
subject will in a short time be submitted officially to the 
syndicate, and we hope that it will commend itself to 
a favourable consideration. 

Mr. Jehangir B. Murzban proposed a vote of thanks to the 
Chairman ; and the latter proposed a cordial vote of thanks 
to His Excellency the Governor for his kind attendance at 
the meeting. Both the votes were received with prolonged 
applause, and were carried with acclamation. 

His Excellency the Governor, who, on rising, was receiv¬ 
ed with prolonged cheers, made a humorous reply to the 
vote of thanks. His Excellency said he entered that hall 
with a sense of security that he would not have to make 
a speech or to reply to an address. (A laugh.) He had just 
returned from his tour in Sind and had received a cordial 
greeting as the Governor of this presidency; and, at this 
meeting no time was lost in reminding him that he had the 
honor of being Chancellor of the University. (Applause and 
laughter.) They would not be surprised to hear, as the Vice- 
Chancellor was also present, that their request about Zend 
and Pehelvi being made University languages would at 
once be submitted to and considered by the executive body 
over which Mr. Justice West presided, but of which, he 
must remind Mr. Jeevunjee, the Chancellor was not a 
member, so that he must be absolved from all complicity 
in its misdeeds ! (Cheers). His Excellency then asked to 
be allowed to add his humble tribute of sincere thanks 
to the learned lecturer, whose visit not only to this 
presidency, but to India generally, would prove very fruit¬ 
ful. The result of his researches would soon come to light 
without constituting a home charge (applause and laughter) ; 
and in the republic of letters, which was not always peace 
ful, Orientalists would find in the learned treatise of our 
distinguished guest fresh war material. Although His 
Excellency would not be able personally to benefit by 


24 


Par si-ism: its place in History. 

the result of their learned researches, he would be glad to 
send them to the Secretariat. (Laughter.) His Excellency 
would not be surprised if Pehelvi were made an optional 
subject of examination for the competitive Civil Service 
examinations (Cheers), and if one of the results were to raise 
the age for those examinations. (Loud applause.) 

The proceedings then terminated, His Excellency the 
Governor being cheered all the way up to his carriage. 


OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 

The Bombay Gazette, (English Daily), February 8 and 8. 

In the course of the interesting lecture delivered yesterday afternoon 
by M. Darmesteter, that gentleman brought down the house by the happy 
expression that the Jubilee of the Queen, now being organised, might be 
deemed the festivities of the marriage of the East to Western civilisation. 
His Excellency the Governor, who was present, in an impromptu little 
speech created considerable amusement by declaring humorously that he 
hoped Pehelvi would be made one of the optional subjects of study for 
the examination for the Civil Service, and that the addition would be the 
means of raising the age of the candidates. In a more serious vein we 
would suggest in view of the enthusiasm elicited by M. Darmesteter’s 
suggestive reference to the Jubilee that an excellent way to commemorate 
that great historical occasion would be to found a Victoria professorship 
of the Bombay University to be filled in the first place by M. Darmes¬ 
teter himself, who would then be able to give undivided attention to the 
unfolding and preservation of Oriental manuscripts which, in his eloquent 
words, await but the hand of genius to awake the past from death and 
make its truths the visions of the future. 

Professor James Darmesteter, the eminent Oriental scholar from 
France, leaves Bombay for Europe by the mail steamer on Friday next. 
The very learned discourse, which he delivered last week on the Parsi 
religion, has impressed the mind of that community so much that the re¬ 
commendation which he so vehemently and earnestly made for founding 
a “ Victoria Jubilee Pehelvi Text Fund,” with the view of printing and 
publishing the ancient Pehelvi manuscripts, has been cordially taken up 
by Mr. K. K. Kama and others interested in the matter, and a thousand 
rupees have been already subscribed. This is a single day’s collection, 
and the promoters are sanguine that the requisite amount of fifteen thou¬ 
sand rupees will be contributed in a very short time. 




Parsi-ism: its place in History. 25 

The Times of India (English Daily), Bombay, February 4. 

On Wednesday evening Professor Darmesteter gave a most eloquent 
lecture on Zoroastrianism at the Parsee Girls’ School. The large room 
was crowded with Parsees of all ranks and ages, who listened with great 
attention to the masterly exposition of their ancient creed by a foreigner. 
Professor Darmesteter pointed out that no great religion could ever perish, 
for, in spite of persecution and neglect, it lived in the hearts of a faithful 
few. Zoroastrianism lived and influenced the lives of men because it 
impressed them with the value of faith and the belief in the ultimate 
triumph of good. At the close of the lecture the learned Professor made 
an eloquent appeal to the Parsees to make some attempt to preserve the 
very few texts that survive of their ancient literature. He told them that 
some years ago a society was started for printing the important works of 
the mediaeval literature of France, and that many Frenchmen, owing 
to the pride they took in the ancient literature of their country, 
subscribed to the society, though they could not understand a word 
of the text. H. E. the Governor in a bright and humorous speech, 
which was received with great applause, said he would be happy 
to subscribe to the society for printing Pehelvi texts, though he 
would not be able to read the works when printed. He would, 
however, send them to the Secretariat, where they would be of 
use when Pehelvi was made an optional subject of examination for the 
competitive Civil Service Examination, and that one of the inevitable 
results to follow would be the raising of age for the Civil Service Exami¬ 
nation. A society for the editing and publishing of ancient documents 
would be a credit to Bombay and of great service to letters. It could 
have no better patron than Lord Beay. To his personal exertion and 
enthusiasm Bombay owes the continuation of the work of preserving and 
editing the ancient documents in the Secretariat. Professor Darmesteter 
might himself be induced to undertake the editing of the first book. In 
our columns have appeared of late an advertisement inviting candidates 
for the Wilson Lectureship to be delivered next year to send in their 
applications. The subject is Hebrew and the other Semitic languages, 
and we wish some arrangements could be made by which Professor 
Darmesteter could be persuaded to come to Bombay again to deliver them. 
We think it could be far better if the University, instead of paying Rs. 
1, 000 every year for lectures which no one attends, would every third 
year try to tempt a European savant to come to Bombay. Three 
hundred pounds is, of course, no very large sum to tempt a man with a 
European reputation to come to India, but a visit to India is both useful 
and pleasant to an Orientalist, and £300 would pay the expenses of the 
journey. The experiment is worth trying. 

4 


26 Par si-ism : its place in History, 

Indian Spectator (English Weekly), Bombay, February 6. 

Professor Darmestetcr’s Lecture on Parsi-ism, which we reproduce 
elsewhere in exlenso, was a treat to the select audience who met to hear 
him in the hall of the Bai Bhikhaiji School. The choice of place was in 
keeping with the character of the discourse, the lecturer and also of the 
audience. At the Framji Cawasji Hall, originally intended, the proceed¬ 
ings might have suffered considerably, though of course the ranks of the 
audience would have been swelled by schoolboys from the adjoining 
cricket ground and clerks and shopkeepers returning home for the even¬ 
ing meal. 

Of the Lecture itself we are not qualified to say much in this place. 
But the first thought that occurs to us on reading it is that it offers a 
striking contrast to the general run of lectures on Zoroastrism, for 
instance, to the purely eulogistic treatment by Dr. Haug of the Gathas, 
and other amiable effusions of the Dasturs. M. Darmesteter’s effort is 
indeed a scientific one, and that is its greatest merit. We badly want 
scientific investigation into the literature and religion of Iran. M. 
Darmesteter has devoted himself to that study more closely, and judging 
by results, more successfully, than others. Ilis valuable discourse of 
Wednesday gives evidence of a critical, but at the same time reverent, 
spirit of inquiry, and of a power of keen appreciation which finds vent 
here and there in passages of natural eloquence. The effort is worthy of 
the distinguished countryman of Anquetil du Perron, and while it entitles 
him to the gratitude of the Parsi community, it will doubtless add to the 
high reputation he already owns as an authority on the subject under 
notice. We doubt if such an historical sketch of Parsi-ism was ever 
before presented to the community, or whether such an earnest exhorta¬ 
tion is likely again to be addressed to the representatives of the faith by 
a foreigner. 

M. Darmesteter must have been not a little surprised to find that 
though there were so many among his Parsi auditors to thank, congratu¬ 
late and make much of him, none of them came forward to adopt his 
important suggestion about the starting of a Jubilee Fund for the publica¬ 
tion of Pehelvi texts. It was reserved for Lord Reay, a “ foreigner,” to 
refer to the suggestion made by another “ foreigner” and to offer to 
subscribe for a copy of the proposed publications. To us this attitude is 
not very surprising. Hindus are as bad as Parsis in this respect, if not 
worse. They will go on deprecating “ foreign” assistance or interpretation, 
while at the same time they lift not their least fingers unless there is 
immediate personal gain in view, or at any rate no personal sacrifice to 
make. They cannot part with money except under very strong 
inducements. In the present case there is another consideration besides 
that of cash. This latter our Parsi friends might get over for very 


Parsi-ism: its place m History. 


27 


Shame. But might we not expose our religious literature to the critical 
scrutiny of modern science by publishing the old texts ? This is the 
question which probably agitates the custodians of our Pehelvi treasures. 
It is the same with Hindus. We have heard Max Muller and his Hindu 
collaborators taken to task for the translation of Sanskrit works which 
do not prove that the steam engine and the electric telegraph were 
known to the Vedic fathers. How narrow is this conception of patriotic 
duty ! And how baneful are its results ! The youth of the country are 
being driven to indifferentism and atheism by this shutting up of the old 
thoughts, while elsewhere it is the order of the day to challenge inquiry 
into the most cherished of religious convictions. Hindus and Parsis 
have little to fear from such inquiry. And our advice to both communi¬ 
ties is—Let There Be Light. 

In this connection there is one point on which we cannot dwell too 
long, and which is probably the one point Professor Darmesteter has most 
at heart. We mean the necessity of raising a fund for the publication of 
the Pehelvi texts—the opportunity being quite at hand—as a Parsi me¬ 
morial of the Jubilee. It is a pity that though the lecturer met with so 
much applause on Wednesday, and though thanks were proposed, se¬ 
conded and voted to him with enthusiasm, still no one rose to second his 
proposition. Luckily, Lord Reay, who seems to have noticed that 
omission, and perhaps was afraid lest the expense of the necessary pu¬ 
blication should some day fall heavily on the Home Department, with 
admirable tact and discretion seconded the Professor’s proposition, as far 
as he could do, in offering himself as first member of the unedited 
Pehelvi Texts Society. But still no one in the audience came forward 
as second subscriber. Let us hope it was pure respect that prevented our 
co-religionists from following the excellent example. But there is not 
much time to be lost if we want to perform what is felt to be a sacred 
duty to ourselves, to our religion, and to European science. We have 
shown our distinguished visitor in what high esteem we hold him : but 
what have we done to deserve from him an equal meed of esteem ? We 
may be sure that his reasoned opinion of us, and accordingly the opinion 
of learned Europe, will not depend on any tokens of gratitude we may 
heap upon him, however flattering they may be, but upon what we shall 
actually do for the promotion of Zoroastrian studies, for which he came 
here. Professor Darmesteter has impressed all those who have read or 
heard him with a feeling that he is not one of those men to be silenced or 
won over by applause and compliments ; he has taken the trouble to come 
to India to do real work. He might have been lionised and have had a 
very good time of it among us, had he cared. Some of our friends are 
considering the question how best to commemorate his visit. And we 
may undertake to say that the best way in his eye would be to adopt his 


28 


Parxi-ism : its place in History. 


proposition at once. M. Darmesteter has more than once told us that 
Zoroastrism is essentially a religion of action. Shall we prove him wrong 
by our inaction in this matter ? 

Jam-e-Jamshed (Gujarati Daily), Bombay, February 4 and 6. 

Professor Darmesteter says that European savants are still not in a 
position to make as much progress as they wish in the knowledge of the 
Parsi religion for want of adequate resources. If the Parsis are really an¬ 
xious to see a reformation taking place among them, it is their duty to 
raise a fund for the publication of valuable manuscripts which still remain 
unnoticed, and in this connection to perpetuate the memory of Her 
Majesty’s Jubilee, thus celebrating the golden wedding of the Eastern 
civilization with the Western, What other words will be more en¬ 
couraging than these? Our main object is to impress on the mind 
of our venerable old friends who were present that time has been 
working its own changes, that the advance of English education has con¬ 
tributed to deaden the religious sensibilities of the Parsi community, 
and that what has still been preserved by them will die with them. It is 
in their time only, and not hereafter, that the primitive supreme excel¬ 
lence of the Parsi religion will be preserved intact. If the venerable 
gentlemen wish well of their future generations and desire to see them im¬ 
pressed with the invaluable principles of their religion, it is their duty, then,, 
to carry out the proposal of Professor Darmesteter at the first opportu¬ 
nity. The “ Victoria Jubilee Pehelvi Text Fund,” over and above espe¬ 
cially perpetuating the occasion of Her Majesty’s Jubilee, possesses in 
itself particular importance in many respects. The innate value of the 
treasure lying hidden here and there and subject to the revolutionary 
effects of time, remains unknown to the Parsis as well as to the people 
of other nationalities instead of being usefully brought to light; and 
lienee it is that European and Parsi scholars are not in a position to 
make new researches and to bring into light what is in darkness. Manu¬ 
scripts are apt to be lost with the death of their owners, or interpolated. 
It is difficult to gather satisfactory evidence in connection with the origin¬ 
al works of Zarathustra from “ Dabestan ” and “ Sarestan.” Their 
original copies, which were once in the library of the Emperor Akbar, have 
been lost in process of time. “ Bundehesh,” “ Nirengestan,” and “ Pehelvi 
Ravayets,” which exist in their primitive form, if published, will facilitate 
the study of European and Indian scholars, and throw much light on anti¬ 
que subjects. The “ Victoria Jubilee Pehelvi Text Fund ” will give pub¬ 
licity to these important works, and, therefore it is not necessary any more 
to say how valuable the fund will be in its future application. 


29 


Par si-ism,: its place in History. 

Akhbar-e-Soudagar (Gujarati Daily), Bombay, February 5. 

Is it proper to say that the Parsis have no faith in their religion when 
they evince so much zeal to hear the lectures of foreign scholars and to 
see.them throwing light on its unknown portions ? Doubtless the out¬ 
ward disregard which we perceive shows that they are like cattle 
without an owner, groping in the dark without the guidance of a well-ac¬ 
complished religious preceptor. From the very valuable and entertaining 
lecture of Professor Darmesteter, recently delivered, it will be concluded 
that the religion of the Parsis has many sublime excellencies ; but they 
lie hidden from the community for want of a good guide. If, according 
to the opinion of the Professor, efforts are not resumed to preserve the 
relics, at which they look with indifference, there is a great probability that 
in a century more the name of the religion will be extinct from the face of 
the earth. What have the Parsis done in the matter hitherto ? We 
venture to say that nothing has been accomplished. We fear lest the in¬ 
estimable admonition of the Professor may remain within the walls of the 
building where it was administered. 

Yezdan Parast (Gujarati Weekly), Bombay, February 6. 

Professor Darmesteter has rightly laughed out in his lecture the idea 
of several people who profess to be great students of the Zarathustrian 
religion, and who have, as such, often spoken in public that the main basis 
of the said religion rests on the five Gathas only and that other Avesta 
writings, as well as Pehelvi, Persian, and Gujarati books on the same, 
should not be considered as authorities. The Professor has announced 
in his lecture that in Europe two or three scholars, considering the 
Avesta writings as a portion of the Yedas, try to interpret them through 
the Yedic language ; and likewise some here, too, endeavour to study 
those writings through Sanskrit. But this is considered a gross blunder 
on the part of such students inasmuch as Pehelvi and Persian books 
assist in making explicit the complicated portion of the Avesta writings, 
and to this effect Professor Darmesteter says from his personal experience 
that he has come across those Pehelvi books which can solve the inex¬ 
plicable passages of the Avesta writings line by line. In other words he 
has dealt a strong blow to those pessimists who make light of Pehelvi 
and Persian commentaries. No doubt there are some works of a later 
period which do not conform to the spirit of the Avesta writings ; but 
that alone does not render them quite inconsistent and useless. Many 
a time valuable things are obtained from sifting the dross and refuse ; 
and similarly these very writings may contain something that cannot but 
be appreciated as of great importance. Considered in this light, the 


30 


Parsi-ism: its place in History . 

proposal of the Professor to give publicity to Pehelvi, Persian, and 
Gujarati manuscripts is just and fair, because he thinks that they will 
throw considerable light on the still unintelligible portion of the Avesta 
writings. Copies of several manuscripts are so few that in process 
of time they will perish. As, for instance, in the whole of India 
there are two copies only extant of Bundehesh in entirety, and it is said 
that these two manuscript copies are in size double the one which has 
been already published and translated. Similarly, “ Dade6tan-e-Dini,” 
“ Nirangestan,” and “ Minokherat,” still exist in an unpublished form, 
and hardly two or four manuscript copies can be had of them. The 
consequence is that those who are desirous to prosecute study cannot 
get them and many valuable facts in connection with our religion 
remain unknown. It is highly important to give publicity to such 
manuscripts if the Parsis are at all willing to promote the study of their 
religion, and thereby to get solved those questions which are still disput¬ 
ed. The Professor gives an estimate of Ks. 15.000, on the whole, 
for such publication — a sum which, when looked at in the light of 
charities dispensed every year by the Parsis, is almost nothing. There are 
many charitable Parsis who, if they choose, can individually contribute the 
sum at once. 

East Goftar (Gujarati Weekly), Bombay, February 6. 

Professor Darmesteter is well known to the educated class of the 
Parsis, and he has won distinction among the litterateurs of Europe by his 
English translations of Yandidad and Yashts. The Avesta books are 
considered by the Parsis more valuable than their other sacred writings ; 
but European scholars who are devoted to the study of Oriental langu¬ 
ages view them in a different light. Eugene Burnouf having deciphered 
the Avesta writings, a clue was secured for the reading of cuneiform, in¬ 
scriptions and old Persian. According to Professor Darmesteter the 
religion preached by Zarathustra was the first one to show that virtue and 
morality would in the long run triumph. That the religion of those people 
among whom Zarathustra preached his own did not differ from the one 
professed by the ancestors of the Christians. Again, according to Pro¬ 
fessor Darmesteter, the “ Shah .Namah” of Firdouei is nothing more than 
a versified commentary on the Avesta writings. The Professor shows 
that the Brahminical creed did not notice the true aims of life, and that 
Islamism teaches man to place implicit faith in Fate ; but it is not so with 
the Zarathustrian faith t which teaches man to disbelieve destiny and 
promises him final triumph. He says that there are still extant manu¬ 
scripts of the middle ages, which are apt to be destroyed, being very few 
in number, and that, therefore, it is the duty of the Parsis to save them 
from destruction. The book “ Bundehesh” is, according to the opinion 


31 


Parsi-ism : its place in History. 

of Professor Darmesteter, the oldest Pehelvi writing extant, and he 
suggests the raising of a fund for the publication of such old manuscripts 
and other inscriptions. 


Kaiser-i-Hind (Gujarati Weekly), Bombay, February 6 and 13. 

The Parsi community is under deep obligations to European savants 
for many researches. But they have not as yet been able to bring every^ 
thing to light in connection with their religion. Much lies in darkness, 
and it is the duty of the Parsis to raise a fund, as proposed by Pro¬ 
fessor Darmesteter, in order to enable them to bring the valuable treasure, 
which lies unknown in a corner, to light. The Jubilee festivities will 
be remembered in no better way than by raising a Pehelvi Text Fund. 
We should not pass over the hint dropped by the French scholar 
that the Parsis should co-operate with European savants in the difficult 
work of making researches into their religious writings. We are of 
opinion that the present is a fitting opportunity to make such a fund as 
popular as possible, and it is our recommendation to all our Parsi brethren 
to contribute their mite towards the fund in memory of the auspicious 
occasion. If every Parsi will subscribe one rupee, a sufficient amount 
will, in a short time, be collected to meet the purpose. But in the same 
connection we ask our Parsi brethren not to be indifferent and 
negligent, as has been the case with many of its kind. 

Satya Mitra (Gujarati Weekly), Bombay, February 13. 

No doubt the Professor’s lecture would be very valuable for those Parsis 
of the present age who are irreligious or ignorant. When an European 
scholar coming over thousands of miles takes the trouble of explaining 
the antiquity of Zarathustra to the Parsis of this place, we must regard 
it as a sign of divine grace. We ask—what effect would such lectures 
produce where there is no faith, no true education, no society of morals, 
that distinguished the Parsis of old ? It is a matter of gratification to us 
that the French Professor strongly recommends Parsis to learn “ Shah 
Namah”, which we have been advocating single-handed years past without 
any avail. . . . We were so much convinced of the good that would 

ultimately accrue to the Parsi community that, 16 years ago, we published 
at our own expense an abridged edition of the Shah Namah , containing 
10,000 selected couplets, and introduced the book in the Mullan Firoz 
Madresseh, then under our supervision. Besides this, we have translated 
and published in Gujarati a good portion of the epic in nine volumes, with 
explanatory notes. 





32 Parsi-ism : its place in History . 

Indian Spectator (English Weekly), Bombay, September 18. 

The Committee formed at the instance of Professor James 
Darmesteter for the preservation of Zend and Pehelvi Texts 
announce that they have resolved to publish the Bundahesh, the 
Nirangastan and the Yadgarzariran. And to this end the Com¬ 
mittee call upon Parsi gentlemen who have the original manuscripts 
in their possession to send the same to Mr. Cursetji Furdoonji 
Parakh. We hope the invitation will be duly responded to. Parsis 
ought to be very grateful to Dr. West for the valuable assistance 
he has offered m this direction, and to Dr. Darmesteter for his 
initial proposal. 










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